Murder by Numbers (23 page)

“Gary!” Nora screamed.

But his shouting voice drowned out hers. “I killed Oliver Chissel when he threatened my mother, and I'll kill anyone who gets in my way.”

The police showed as shadows against the front window. Gary turned so his gun aimed directly at the shortest shadow—Brenna Ross, Liza realized—and he began running.

“Gary—stop. Stop!
Freeze!
” In four words, Bert Clements went from friend of the family to stone-cold cop.

Gary took another step, then his gun went off. Liza could see the plume of flame. She also could see that it was aimed at the ceiling.

Her ears rang and she could barely hear Clements yell, “Hold your—”

The rest of his words were lost as three deputies let off shots. Liza grabbed hold as Nora tried to claw past her, bringing the woman out of the line of fire.

But Liza's head was still above the prescription desk as Gary Schilling staggered, spun, and went down.

Spurred by the gunfire, deputies at the back door broke in and hauled Liza and Nora out into the rear alley. Liza was just as glad not to go out through the front of the pharmacy, passing the still form of Gary Schilling on the floor. A deputy was already trying to resuscitate him as they left, but the prognosis didn't sound all that good.

When they arrived up front, Sheriff Clements was glad to see the apparent hostages rescued. He was less happy with his troops up there. “When I want you to shoot someone, I'll say ‘Open fire,'” he growled. “When I start an order with ‘Hold your,' what do you think I'm expecting you to hold?” Clements glared at the three shamefaced male deputies.

“The only one not making like the Fourth of July was Brenna—and she was the one the perp had started off aiming at!”

She missed Clements's next comments because Michael came up and flung his arms around her. Liza found herself hugging him back just as tightly. She had a grim notion that Gary's last stand would play prominently in her nightmares for years to come.

“You're okay? They—he—didn't hurt you? I was so worried—go in or call the cops—” Michael babbled in her ear.

“I think you did the right thing,” she told him. “You can't go around kicking the hell out of everybody.”

Liza turned to hear racking sobs. Nora Schilling hung between a pair of deputies who struggled to hold up her limp weight.

Guess the full realization of what happened finally hit her
, Liza thought.

The woman only came to life when an ambulance arrived from County Hospital. She tried to throw herself on the gurney as paramedics wheeled Gary away, his face already hidden under an oxygen mask. Suddenly the two deputies found themselves struggling with a madwoman straining after her son. “Gary! Gary! Oh God!”

Clements caught the attention of one of the men. “I suppose she ought to go to the hospital,” he said gently. “But I don't thing she should ride with her boy. Take her in a cruiser.”

The deputy nodded. “Come on, ma'am, they have to work on him in there,” he said as Nora again tried to lunge after the ambulance. “We'll take you to the hospital. We promise.”

Between them, the deputies moved the broken woman to a patrol car.

Liza watched their exit with torn emotions. Clements looked fairly satisfied—even if Gary didn't make it out of the hospital, he'd confessed to a roomful of people and backed it up with a gunshot.

She wondered if the sheriff's jovial expression would change when he got to hear her statement.

“Well, I have to admit, you figured it out before I did,” Clements admitted. “Very impressive, except for the part where the kid pulled a gun and took you hostage. You might want to consider a little more liaison with the professionals before you attempt an apprehension on your own.”

He cast another glance at her. “Or should I worry about running against you in next year's primaries?”

Liza shook her head, her ears seeming to ring with the magic word Clements had just uttered. “I've got enough on my plate as it is, Sheriff,” she said. “Do you want to get my statement while it's all still fresh in my mind?”

They went to the City Hall, and Clements
wasn't
happy with what Liza had to tell him. He'd expected only to put a nice bow on top of the confession he'd heard. Instead, all his ribbons were unraveling. Most important, if Gary didn't pull through, he'd only have Liza's hearsay evidence.

Still, Clements was fascinated with the case Liza outlined, although she was diplomatically vague about where she'd learned about the glass fragments found with Chissel's body. The sheriff shook his head. “So you went in there to brace Nora Schilling about the murder—and you had nothing! All she had to do was start yelling at you for making crazy accusations—or if she could hold it together, to stonewall you. And what would you do?”

“I figured I could go to you with information about the earlier swindle. There would have to be records, client lists or something, from Chissel's brokerage days. Really, all I expected to do was find out whether Nora knew Chissel before. But when she reacted the way she did, things just sort of snowballed.”

Now that she'd gotten it all out, Liza found herself shaking—as the reality of what had happened finally set in.

Clements stood and shook his head, looking down at her from his considerable height. “Well, I guess your part is done. You can go while we start all the boring things you see on crime scene shows—trying to find any pieces of those broken bottles in the window to test against the pieces on Chissel, poring through records, trying to match the tape to something in the pharmacy's stock.”

He scowled. “Just our luck, the most important part of crime scene evidence floated out to sea. We might have been able to get a fingerprint off the adhesive on that piece of tape. And if the print turned out to be from Nora Schilling, we could connect her directly to the crime.”

Liza gave him a smile. “As a cop once told me, that all sounds like a lot of what-if and maybe.”

Clements sighed. “Maybe it does,” he admitted. “Maybe it does.”

Michael drove Liza home with all the car windows open. It was kind of chilly, but at least he wasn't sneezing his head off. When they arrived on Hackleberry Avenue, Mrs. Halvorsen was already in front of her house, waiting to intercept them.

“The Maiden's Bay gossip grapevine is alive and well,” Liza muttered as she got out of the car.

“Are you all right, Liza?” Mrs. H. asked anxiously. “With all that shooting and everything, you must be a bundle of nerves.”

“And you won't be able to get anything at the pharmacy for them,” Michael couldn't resist putting in.

“Come in, come in,” Mrs. H. shooed them into her house and installed them in her living room. Liza just sighed and let herself sink into the sofa. Right now, getting up—or out—was more work than she wanted to think about.

“Perhaps a glass of sherry would help,” their hostess said.

Before Liza could get her mouth open to object—she'd had Mrs. H.'s sherry before—the older woman went on, “Wait, I think we still have some of that rum we won at the Kiwanis raffle.”

In fairly short order, Liza sat with a cup of the inevitable tea liberally laced with a very good rum.

It would be so easy just to close my eyes
, Liza thought drowsily.

But when her lids fluttered shut, her memory insisted on replaying the image of Gary Schilling's fall to the floor.

That brought Liza back to the land of the living with a jolt.

She explained the chain of logic that had led to her conversation with Nora Schilling, crediting Mrs. H. for her information on the Timmons connection. Michael listened in fascination as Liza tied the various elements into a case. Then he got extremely upset as she described the aftermath of Nora's wordless confession.

“You made me drive you over there, sneezing and wheezing, so you would pull a stunt like that?” Michael burst out.

“Yeah, and I even forgot to get you a bottle of nose spray.” Liza gave him a feisty stare from the depths of the overstuffed upholstery.

“I don't care about that,” Michael almost shouted. “I want to holler at you for putting yourself in danger the way you did.” His voice got quieter. “Even if you tell me I don't have the right anymore.”

“Certainly you have the right,” Mrs. H. interjected. “You still love her, don't you?”

“I—I—yes,” Michael stuttered.

Mrs. Halvorsen nodded. “Well, holler away then.”

Michael opened his mouth, looked at Liza, and shut it again. “I seem to have lost the words.”

“Really,” Mrs. H. huffed. “And you an author.”

The would-be matchmaker subsided, glaring at them in annoyance. But the silence between Liza and Michael as she finished her tea wasn't exactly unfriendly.

Finally, she started struggling out of her overstuffed cocoon, sighing. “I have to get up. Ava will probably want to do a telephone interview with me about all this for the paper. And then there's one more mystery to solve.”

“What are you talking about?” Michael said. “You figured out everything that happened up here.”

“That still leaves what happened in Santa Barbara,” Liza replied. “I think I've figured out a way to get Derrick's money for Jenny.”

“You mentioned wanting to get in touch with your Uncle Jim.” Michael began.

“Oh, the spy over in Japan?” Mrs. Halvorsen asked.

Liza shot her a look, wondering exactly how far Mrs. H.'s gossip hotline extended.

“Did he give you some sort of pointer about codes?” Michael asked.

“No,” Liza admitted. “It was Sheriff Clements who gave me the clue—and you were right there when he did.”

Michael took hold of Liza's hand and helped to haul her out of the couch's embrace. “This I've got to see.”

Thanking Mrs. H., they headed over to Liza's place. Of course, Michael began sneezing as soon as he encountered Rusty.

Liza ran up the stairs to the bathroom and returned with the bottle of nasal spray. “Here.” She offered it to him. “Maybe this will work. It's, uh, only slightly used.”

Michael squinted at the little bottle and then shook it. “Eh,” he said. “We've shared worse.”

While he dosed himself, Liza sat at her computer, getting online. Soon Michael was looking over her shoulder. “What are you doing?”

At least he didn't sound so nasal, and he wasn't erupting every couple of seconds.

“I'm Googling for a decent history of the 1984 election—specifically, the run-up to the conventions.”

“And the sheriff told you to do this?”

“No, but he reminded me of something that showed Derrick hadn't made a mistake when he wrote ‘candidates' in his message.” Liza glanced back at him from her screen. “Walter Mondale was the Democratic presidential candidate who lost the election. But there were a bunch of other Democratic presidential candidates who lost in the primaries.”

“And Sheriff Clements did mention that word,” Michael admitted.

Liza was already busy with her mouse, scrolling down the list of Web pages. “Here's one that looks promising.”

She clicked on the link, and a document on the 1984 campaign came up. “Iowa caucuses, New Hampshire. Right—here's a list of some of the other people running in the primaries. Gary Hart, John Glenn, huh, Jesse Jackson…” She ran down the list of past political luminaries. “And—aha!—the governor of Florida.”

“That wouldn't have been a Bush,” Michael ventured.

“Nope, his name was Askew,” Liza said. “And can you guess his first name?”

Michael frowned. “How could I do that?”

“Name Derrick's favorite sandwich.”

“A Reuben?”

“That's the name!” Liza told him. “Reubin Askew.”

She could feel the puff of irritated breath Michael directed down into her hair. “And this helps us how?”

Liza dug around for her notebook with Derrick's puzzle and held it up. “It means we're not going to get anywhere with straight sudoku logic. We've got to look at it askew, to find two sets of nine numbers that no sudoku player ever looks for.”

Michael stared at the puzzle solution. “What?”

“When you do sudoku, you look to find the numbers that fill the spaces in all nine rows—and all nine columns. Derrick's clue is trying to get us to look at the puzzle in a different way, askew, at an angle—”

“The diagonals!” Michael burst out.

“Exactly!” Liza began writing down the numbers 451846139. “There we go, from upper left to lower right. As the most likely choice, I'm betting that this is the account number. Then we go from lower left to upper right and get the password—793147872.”

“I think you've got it.”

Liza shrugged. “I'll pass it along to Jenny tomorrow. Josh Colberg must know which bank in the Caymans Derrick dealt with. Then Jenny can put the numbers to the test.” She shrugged. “Besides, I've got other fish to fry.”

“More expensive than three-quarters of a million smackers?” Michael asked.

“As much as my life is worth!” she replied. “I've got two jobs—and two masters, Ava and Michelle.”

“Mistresses,” Michael corrected.

“That makes them sound like either kept women or the female leads in an X-rated feature film,” Liza complained.

“Well, with Michelle, it may not be far off.”

Liza laughed. “She will probably be getting out her whip. Chissel's murder being solved is news. And however the story turns out, we've got to spin, spin, spin—turning
Counterfeit
into
the
film to be seen when it opens!”

She couldn't help but notice the glint of disappointment in Michael's eyes as she picked up the phone.